A Wartime Secret

by Annie Murray

  This story is not about the Land Girls, but special thanks go to Marjorie Eglinton of Shirley, Birmingham, who worked as a Land Girl and kindly told me many stories – including the one about the rabbit.

  Contents

  I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  II

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  III

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  I

  1

  Ladywood, Birmingham, June 1945

  As soon as she saw the telegraph boy at her door with his bike in the pouring rain, she knew.

  ‘Oh . . . Oh no!’

  One hand flew to her chest, her pounding heart. Quickly she lowered it again, trying not to look like the madwoman she felt, in her apron, her unbrushed hair falling all over the place, still holding the baby’s spoon coated in mashed potato.

  She tried to take the telegram from him calmly. Shutting the door, she leaned against it, hearing the muffled chatter of the wireless from the back room. If it was bad news, weren’t they supposed to ask you if you were on your own? Through all these years of war she had dreaded a telegram arriving like this . . .

  Daring herself, she looked at the envelope in her hand. Grace Chapman, 21 Inkerman Street . . .

  ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.

  She managed to get back to the kitchen, her legs like water as she sank down at the table, hands shaking so much she could hardly open the envelope. She was oblivious to everything: to the rain falling outside, to little Barbara chuckling to herself where Grace had hurriedly laid her on a blanket on the linoleum.

  HOME TONIGHT. SIX WEEKS LEAVE. TED.

  She gasped, the words burning into her.

  Getting unsteadily to her feet, she went to the battered sideboard and clicked off the wireless. In the sudden quiet she stared at the telegram lying on the faded pink flowers of the tablecloth: this message from the husband she had not seen for more than five years. A husband whose only communications had been the briefest of letters sent through by the Red Cross. And she had written back, trying to sound hopeful, trying to draw him close to her again, while feeling as if she was throwing stones out into the darkness. Here in front of her now were the words she had yearned to read for so long. She had heard no bad news of Ted, other than that he had been taken prisoner, back in 1940. Sooner or later, she had thought, he must come home. But now . . . The words terrified her; made her feel as if she was on trial.

  What kind of wife are you, Grace Chapman?

  Her daughter’s gurglings returned her attention to the little back room in her two-up two-down terrace with its exhausted old furniture: the old sideboard, scullery with a sink, the black range with a grubby rag rug beside it and scrubbed deal table. On the table rested the bowl of mashed potato and gravy and on the blanket the baby with gravy-potato on her face and encrusted in her cap of fair hair . . .

  ‘Oh, Baba!’ Her little girl looked stricken for a second at her tone, then chortled happily, waving her plump feet in the air. Grace could not help a second’s smile, even though she felt liquid with nerves. ‘Look at the state of you! You’ll have to have the rest of your dinner later, babby – we’ve got to go . . .’

  So agitated she could not think straight, she scuttled about the room, muttering out loud as she shoved bits and pieces for Barbara into a cloth bag. What am I going to do? He’s coming back. He’s really coming – today, tonight. What can I say to him? Lord above – what do I do?

  ‘Come on, babby . . .’ Frantic, she scooped Barbara up into her arms and rushed out of the house.

  2

  Nothing about Inkerman Street was different from usual that afternoon: the rows of soot-stained terraced houses, a number of them smashed into bombsites; the pubs and factories; the entries leading to back yards. It was an unremarkable day, with a quiet flatness to things. The war was over – for Europe, in any case. The air felt close and muggy, smelling of recent rain, with the sun trying to break through. The coalman was delivering to a nearby house, children were turning skipping ropes on the cobbled street, mothers sat or stood in doorways in the shade . . . A normal day.

  Yet to Grace in her frantic state, everything felt electrified with a sense of crisis. She knew she must look a state, her wavy black hair all over the place, stains down her pale-blue white-spotted dress, but none of that mattered. Ted’s coming home, he’s coming today played like a tattoo in her head.

  She glanced back at her own little terraced house as she set off, at the faded blue door and tarnished knocker, the front windows shrouded by aged net curtains, and it appeared suddenly strange to her, as if she never usually looked at it. The air, the fall of the light – everything seemed different. Ted. Home. Really coming back after all this time . . . He had been away for longer than they had been married before he left. Ted, my husband. Her feet beat out the rhythm. The man I love . . . She was choked with emotion. Ted, the man to whom she had faithfully written, trying to keep alive the love they had for each other on their wedding day, an eternity ago when she was twenty-two and he twenty-three. Ted, who even now was moving closer – was he on a train? – closer by the moment . . .

  Holding Barbara tightly, the bag swinging on her arm, she walked as fast she could without breaking into a run. She didn’t want to attract attention, but she just had to get there. She had her wits about her just enough to dodge the wettest patches of pavement, as there were holes in her shoes.

  As she scurried along, it felt as if the Grace who had kissed Ted goodbye after his last leave in 1940, and she, the Grace of today – five years later – were trying to reunite, and they could barely recognize each other.

  Who was I then? And who am I now?

  She glanced down at her feet in the scuffed shoes, walking the blue-brick pavement. Even her feet seemed strange to her. She felt like crying for a moment, thinking of that time of innocence before the war.

  Since then, too much had happened. He had happened. And Barbara had happened.

  Barbara, this warm, blue-eyed, beautiful five-month-old weight in her arms. This child, gazing at the houses as if seeing everything for the first time and in whose wide, curious eyes, it was all good and right.

  Grace hammered on the door of an attic-high terraced house two streets away and pushed the door open.

  ‘Joan?’ Her voice was a shriek as she rushed along the narrow hall.

  ‘Here.’ Her sister’s voice came from the back. The house was crammed full of furniture and children and Norman’s train sets and Joan’s knitting.

  Joan was sitting in her kitchen, barefoot in the warmth, her youngest, Davey, playing with wooden bricks at her feet.

  ‘He’s coming back. Tonight!’

  Joan gaped at Grace as she burst in, and pushed her heavy body up in the chair. For a moment Grace felt wild impatience with her sister for being plump and stolid, something for which she was normally grateful. Joan had been Grace’s comfort all her life – rock-like, sensible, slow, while Grace was thin and wiry, her black hair tumbling wildly at every age. Even Joan’s hair was calmer – jet black but straighter and more manageable. She wore it up in a loose bun.

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘I’ve just had the telegram . . .’

  Barbara was holding out her arms towards her cousin Davey. Grace laid her down next to him and plonked herself on the edge of the chair opposite her sister.

  ‘What the hell’m I going to do, Joan?’

  They were the same words she had used when she
found out she was expecting Barbara. Back then, Joan had yelled at her, ‘You’re what? You stupid, stupid . . .’ But now, Joan rolled her eyes and got wearily to her feet, pushing a strand of hair back into her bun.

  ‘What d’you want me to say? Look, Grace, we’ve been over this no end of times. You’ve made your bed and you’ll have to lie on it.’ She plonked the kettle down on the gas and turned. ‘You’re going to have to tell him – there’s no way round it, is there? And if you don’t, there’s plenty will.’

  ‘Not plenty – just that interfering old bitch Madge Fitzgerald.’ Grace got up and paced the room, wringing her hands. ‘I dunno what she gets out of trying to make everyone else’s life a misery.’

  She’d heard a few mutterings among her neighbours of course, when she was carrying Barbara, husband long gone. All the gossips made merry. But it was only Mrs Fitzgerald from along the street, with her religious airs and graces, who might feel it her bounden duty to come out with it to Ted’s face. Just as she was the one who had stopped Grace in the street when she was six months gone with Barbara. She was a pink-faced woman with big solid legs and a brick-red coat who hadn’t even a good word to say about her own husband.

  ‘You needn’t think you can hide the fact that you’re in the family way,’ she said, not troubling to keep her voice down. ‘I should’ve thought you’d be ashamed of yourself, with your husband away, fighting for his country.’ For a moment Grace, standing in front of her trembling with shame and fury, thought Mrs Fitzgerald was going to spit in her face. Instead she gave a haughty sniff and walked around Grace, keeping her distance as if Grace had the plague, and sailed along the road like a walking wall.

  ‘I can’t tell him – not today. I just can’t . . .’

  ‘Look,’ Joan interrupted, subsiding heavily onto her chair again. ‘You’ve kept it from Ted – and you’ve kept it from his mom and dad, up till now. But it can’t go on like this. You’re going to have to face the music. And if he won’t have it – and most husbands wouldn’t – well, that’ll be how it is. No one’d blame him.’ Solemn-faced, she shook her head. ‘I don’t know what Mom would’ve said . . .’

  ‘Nor do I, since I never had the benefit of hearing anything she said,’ Grace snapped, seeing where this familiar conversation was going. The old grief filled her for a moment. She and Joan had been brought up by their mother’s sister after both their parents were carried off by the Spanish flu in 1918. Grace, who had not even been two years old, could barely remember their mother. It was an absence and loss that haunted her life, despite the kindness of Auntie Rose, until she passed away herself, just before this last war. Grace envied Joan, who was seven when their mom died and had had more of her. Not enough, though, she thought furiously, to take it upon herself to predict all moral judgements that their mother might have handed out to Grace on this subject.

  ‘Look, sis,’ she begged. ‘I’ll tell him – course I will. What else can I do? But just take her for me for a day or two, will you? Keep her out of the way? I can’t have him turn up and find another man’s child in the house, straight away. It’s just not right.’

  ‘Well, that’s the truth,’ Joan said sniffily, but she reached down and stroked Barbara’s head. The baby was kicking her legs excitedly. ‘Still – you can’t unmake this one now, can yer?’

  ‘I know,’ Grace said. ‘Look, here’s her things.’ She passed the bag over. ‘Thanks, sis.’

  ‘You’re not going already, are yer? Don’t you want a cuppa now you’re here?’

  ‘No – I’ve got to go and get summat for Ted for dinner . . .’ She looked round distractedly. ‘God – I’m a bag of nerves. What if . . .’ She didn’t want to say it. What if I don’t recognize him? I can hardly remember what he looks like . . . Even with their wedding picture on the mantel, the picture she has stared at and kissed goodnight for so many years, of the shy bridegroom who had stood beside her.

  ‘What about . . . I mean . . .’ Joan hesitated, blushing. ‘You’re still feeding her?’

  Grace, who had been moving towards the door, looked desperately at the clock. It was half past two.

  ‘There’s a bottle in the bag. I’ve put some stera in, watered down. I’ll come back later if I can – and I’ll be round in the morning, soon as I can. You’ll just have to manage . . .’

  Joan gave her a very direct look. ‘Grace, what I mean is – he’s going to notice.’

  Grace blushed in turn. Even now, her blouse sometimes got soaked when the milk let down.

  ‘What else can I do? Just take care of her, sis, please.’ She looked at her sister again. ‘Norm won’t say anything, will he?’

  It’s all right for you, she wanted to say to Joan. Having your husband here all the time. Norman worked at Belliss and Morcom making engines and boilers for the navy. Cocky Norman, a skilled man in a reserved occupation. Ted had always felt inferior to him when they were younger – less skilled, less of a man somehow. Grace knew it was another reason he had volunteered so early for the army.

  ‘He won’t. He’s under orders,’ Joan said. More gently she added, ‘Go on – go and get ready for your husband. What’ll be will be.’

  Grace’s eyes filled with tears. She knelt and kissed Barbara, who was absorbed with little Davey. ‘See you soon, babby.’ She looked up at her sister. ‘Her little dolly’s in the bag.’

  ‘Go,’ Joan repeated, tears in her own eyes now. ‘She’ll be all right with me. Just sod off home and sort yourself out, eh?’

  3

  Grace raced to the shops. It was late in the day and there was no fresh meat left. She resorted to a tin of bully beef and added veg for a stew, trying to steady herself with the routine of cooking.

  Once the smell of meat and gravy was stealing through the house, she went upstairs. With trembling hands, feeling like a criminal, she packed away Barbara’s few clothes, her napkins and toys, into the chest of drawers in the back bedroom.

  Thank goodness Nora’s already gone, she thought. Nora, a girl from near Belfast, with rusty-brown hair, watery blue eyes and a sweet nature, had lodged with her for much of the war while she worked in munitions. She had been a godsend in terms of rent and company and moral support. But now she was married to a lad she had met in Birmingham, and had moved on.

  Grace had been fond of Nora but it would have been very awkward now if Nora was still here. It was hard enough knowing how things were going to be with Ted . . .

  Guiltily, she searched every room for any of Barbara’s things – a muslin cloth here, a nappy pin there – until she was sure there was nothing lying about.

  It won’t be for long, she thought, one way or another. She didn’t let her mind follow the path of what might happen . . .

  It did not take long to hide every trace of her small daughter. With a pang she thought of Barbara sleeping at Joan’s tonight. Her baby had spent every night of her life until now tucked up in bed here beside her, in her bedroom – hers and Ted’s.

  She went into her bedroom, which was at the front, looking out over the street. At this time of day Grace was usually taken up with Barbara. But today, with the dinner cooked and ready, she couldn’t think of anything else to do, and now the nervous tension of waiting overtook her completely.

  Sitting on the side of the bed, she took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding. The window was open a crack and she could hear children, a bouncing ball, a motorbike passing.

  Ted. Ted’s coming home . . . It was so hard to believe.

  If she had not had Barbara, how different this homecoming would have been. All the longing she had felt for him and all the lost days would just have fallen away. She could have run into his arms with no worry or shame, as she had done when they were first together. She had known Ted since she was seventeen, the quiet, handsome boy she met after he had come to Ladywood to work at the sawmill. They had met at a hop in a church hall and he was so shy she had to ask him to dance in the end.

  Tears rose in her eyes, thinking of it. God, sh
e thought, how innocent we both were. It had been a few years until they started walking out seriously. They had seen each other on and off in groups of friends. Lots of girls liked the look of Ted. He was tall and thin, with curly brown hair and grey eyes which smiled even when he wasn’t saying much. A few years later, both more grown-up, or so it seemed then, they had got to know each other again. He was still at the sawmill; she was working in a haberdashery shop near Five Ways. The first time he kissed her properly, he was trembling.

  Laying one hand on the bed, she stroking the coverlet, remembering. All those nights they had lain here. Nights they had fallen into bed exhausted, other nights making love, drifting into sleep at last, holding hands. And then, as time passed, Ted sleeping beside her as she lay staring up into the dark wondering in silent desperation why, after all these months of marriage, she had still not caught for a baby.

  They never talked about it, not properly. If she raised it, Ted blushed and said something like, ‘Ah well – I s’pose it takes a while.’

  But how long is a while, she would think. She loved him for not blaming her the way she blamed herself. She tried not to show it, but by the time they had been married for more than two years and still there was no sign of a child, she felt desperate. What were they doing wrong? Was there something the matter with her? She couldn’t even bear to talk to Joan about it – Joan who by then had two kids with her smug, chirpy husband. Who could you go to find out? She couldn’t face asking Dr. Miles. The very thought made her blush. And she was afraid that Ted was angry with her. He had married a barren woman. Wasn’t that what it was called – like in the Bible? And didn’t that mean a failed woman?

  It was only when Ted joined up, suddenly, in 1939, that she caught a glimmer of how he felt.

  ‘I’ve always been useless at everything,’ he said. ‘School – never was any good there. That’s why I went to the sawmill – at least I could be outside and not have to write and that. At least this is something I can do.’ He had taken her in his arms after telling her he had joined up, and now he looked earnestly down at her. ‘I need to do summat to feel like a man, Gracie. And they say it’ll all be over in a few months – I’ll soon be back.’